Thursday 15 March 2018

bluff and blunderbuss

Not that America had not already squandered any modicum of faith and confidence that the rest of the world might have held for it, Trump managed to destroy all traces of esteem and trust in a rambling, confusing speech at a party fund-raising event—having never made the transition from campaigning to governing—with the boast that he fabricated the trade imbalance between the US and Canada while meeting with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, claiming that America had been put at a disadvantage when the opposite was true and the country’s northern neighbour had been an honest and true broker all along.
Though it’s to be expected that the Grifter in Chief and his apologists will traffic in lies and low information, repute (especially one based on garbage and insincerity) does not replace facts and the rest of the world is not having it and will not suffer these dumb antics. Aside from this maneuver, Trump lashed out at other allies and trading-partners, including South Korea with the implied threat that the US would recall its thirty-thousand service members from the peninsula if the country does not pivot towards more American exports and Japan for its unreasonable (and imaginary) bowling ball impact standard that keeps American-made cars out of its markets but failed to address the protectionist embargo he enacted to impose tariffs on steel imports, which conversely make manufacturing outside of the US more attractive to industry and will most certainly translate to more jobs going overseas. His remarks also omitted the dismissal of his chief diplomat, the dangerous repeal of banking regulations put in place after the last global recession to try to stave off another one, the ongoing investigation into his regime’s ties to Russia, his affair with a porn star and rebuffed any hint of blame for the state of the Republican Party.